Sony Hackers Make New Demands… This Is What Happens When You Negotiate With Terrorists

Though the U.S. government’s official position is that North Korea is to blame, it’s not clear exactly who has hacked Sony and one could argue that it is nothing more than a propaganda show designed to distract the American public from more important matters like a collapsing global economy, problems in Russia or the fact that our Congress just passed a spending bill padded with all sorts of goodies for banking behemoths.

But it has nonetheless been interesting to observe.

So much so that even the President of the United States has now gotten involved. After Sony reportedly pulled ‘The Interview’ from theater distribution earlier this week in response to threats of a “9/11-style attack” from the hacking collective that calls itself the Guardians of Peace, the President said in a press conference that Sony executives made a mistake.

“I am sympathetic to the concerns that they faced,” Obama said. “Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake.”

“I wish they’d spoken to me first [before canceling the release of the film],” Obama said later.

“We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” Obama said. “If somebody’s able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like, or news reports they don’t like. Or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of someone whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.”